Can't we just drop a nuke on the Vatican

[Greyblades]

What is it with religious nuts thinking gays are evil? The heck they do to you?

[ICantSpellDawg]

What is it with religious nuts thinking gays are evil? The heck they do to you?

What is it with religious nuts thinking that God became man and died for our sins?

Gays are not evil. Homosexual sexual activity is evil. Extra-marital heterosexual sexuality is evil. They are considered mortal sins.
There is a conspiracy to foster evil through sinful activity that is highly active in our society, as it has been since the beginning of time. Man doesn't direct it, but man is complicit in it's perpetration. There is also a conspiracy to stop this evil from consuming us.

You guys think traditional Christianity is nuts. I get it. But the Church isn't a vessel on earth to punish, it is here to guide and relay the truth of being and how to be saved. It took a long time for them to figure that out, but they seem to have gotten it. It is most potent when it holds no corporal power. God's Kingdom is not of this world - the punishments for breaking the law are not of this world, although some of the consequences can be felt here as a result of your own action.

Government exists to provide freedoms to individuals so that they may live their lives and make free-will decisions. Temporal laws must exist to free people to do what they will, so long as they don't inhibit the freedom of others with their will. The Church has no such obligation - as a spiritual authority on Earth, it's laws direct which actions are good and which are not good according to God's natural law. They make a mistake when they take away free will or destroy physically transgressors - but they are right to condemn actions and call people to a better way of life.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Yes, that has been the standard line for a long time. However, by endorsing Bernheim's theory, the pope has moved firmly into Glenn Beck territory. What he is pushing now is very different than what you stated above. Gays are no longer simply stubborn sinners who refuse to accept god's teachings, but something much more sinister. In his eyes, the movement to normalize gay relationships, be it through marriage or adoption, is not an end in itself, but instead a "trojan horse" in a much larger grand scheme to undermine society as we know it and destroy humanity. That is some weird, wild stuff man, and until recently had been relegated to the more extreme religious elements within Christianity.

Bernheim's study (I'm basing this purely on the quote you gave) and the Pope's remarks appear to make a distinction between the homosexual rights movement and gay people more generally. To say that the movement has an agenda is not so much conspiratorial as it is simply pointing out the nature of the thing. I don't know how far they want to take the social change, I suppose they have different schools of thought. It's wrong and unhelpful to portray either side in this debate as being necessarily in opposite ideological camps, but the homosexual rights movement's opposition to more traditional views of marriage means that they are naturally more sympathetic to various liberal ideas when it comes to gender and the family.

Gays are not evil. Homosexual sexual activity is evil.

I disagree that it is purely the act that is sinful. If you feel that you have a homosexual orientation then you are on some level still actively rebelling against the way God made you and the life you were designed to lead. To have an attraction to men and refrain from pursuing it is still sinful.

[Greyblades]

And why are homosexual acts evil?

[Rhyfelwyr]

And why are homosexual acts evil?

Because the only person you should be intimate with is your wife, if you are intimate with other people then it cheapens your relationship together. As for homosexual couples who want an exclusive relationship together, that distracts them from the heterosexual relationships they should be having. So they could be a happy family with kids that have a mummy and a daddy.

inb4 this is all coming from someone with no experience in any of this. But it is an ideal to me, so I see it the way I see it.

[Greyblades]

Because the only person you should be intimate with is your wife, if you are intimate with other people then it cheapens your relationship together. As for homosexual couples who want an exclusive relationship together, that distracts them from the heterosexual relationships they should be having. So they could be a happy family with kids that have a mummy and a daddy.

inb4 this is all coming from someone with no experience in any of this. But it is an ideal to me, so I see it the way I see it.

Uh huh.

...Ok I'm too bored for this, I'm going to keep saying "why" until you give up saying "shoulds" and say the bible, with all of it's parts written at latest 1500 years ago, or your priest/pope, a man following said bible who's been told interpriting it the churches way is the only moral and that screwing little boys isnt, told you to. Then I'll laugh at you for living your life both on someone else's standards of morality and on hideously out of date standards. Then I'll pity you for letting yourself act that being part of your religion requires you to detest homosexuality.

Why is sleeping with someone prior to marriage evil?

Why is prostitution evil? Drug abuse? Suicide? Wrath? Gluttony?

They aren't. People partaking in all but drug abuse and wrath usually hurt noone but themselves and when they do its because of the person's personal problems than the "evil". As for drugs that is a case by case thing with the majority being no more evil than a thunder strike, and Wrath is an emotion we're born with, something your god says he gave to you and by association isnt evil or he wouldnt have put it in the human blueprint.

[Rhyfelwyr]

Uh huh.

...Ok I'm too bored for this, I'm going to keep saying "why" until you give up saying "shoulds" and say the bible, with all of it's parts written at latest 1500 years ago, or your priest/pope, a man following said bible who's been told interpriting it the churches way is the only moral and that screwing little boys isnt, told you to. Then I'll laugh at you for living your life both on someone else's standards of morality and on hideously out of date standards. Then I'll pity you for letting yourself act that being part of your religion requires you to detest homosexuality.

Yes well your contributions don't put you in much of a position to be laughing at or pitying anybody.

You don't need to keep asking why, and no, "because the Bible said so" was never my answer. You may notice I have never mentioned or even implied it's significance here.

What I have done is suggest that homosexuality runs contrary to a more natural lifestyle. To avoid any obfuscation over what I mean by 'natural', I mean simply that it is something innate in all people, that it is essential to the human condition and indeed an individuals happiness. To me, this is natural revelation that is merely supported by more direct divine (Biblical) revelation. And indeed, I believe that the traditional nuclear family is all of these things.

If you are going to go "why why why" like a five year old, then here is the obvious answer. Heterosexual procreation is the only means of continuing the human race, and since procreation has never been restricted to pack or hive leaders within the human species, your average healthy human should want to have heterosexual sex and procreate because it is a necessary part of the human condition. If you lack basic desires like eating, drinking, or procreating, then there is something wrong with you, and you are in fact injuring your own happiness by not fulfilling these desires.

And as for why the desire for marriage or at least a long-term partner should be natural to humanity, that is because it has in the past been necessary to protect the product of their procreation, and so we have the desire to do that imbued in all of us, hence fulfilling those conditions is an essential part of being a healthy, happy person.

And of course the Pope meets none of those conditions, but I'm not Catholic.

[Myth]

Gay marriage - OK, whatever floats their boat.
Gays being allowed a state marriage is OK. If the church denies them a church marriage, OK. They can go and get hitched in the Synagogue of Satan for all I care, if the Catholics are against it.
Gays being allowed to adopt children - not OK. And please don't bring the "There are heterosexual couples that abuse children or make bad parents/adoptees" strawman argument.

[CrossLOPER]

...Ok I'm too bored for this, I'm going to keep saying "why" until you give up saying "shoulds" and say the bible, with all of it's parts written at latest 1500 years ago, or your priest/pope, a man following said bible who's been told interpriting it the churches way is the only moral and that screwing little boys isnt, told you to. Then I'll laugh at you for living your life both on someone else's standards of morality and on hideously out of date standards. Then I'll pity you for letting yourself act that being part of your religion requires you to detest homosexuality.

Don't undermine the purpose of the internet forum.

Space Marines

You just killed you own argument.

[jirisys]

A small bomb is enough to be honest. Besides, Italy may blame their scientists for not warning them about it.

~Jirisys ()

[ICantSpellDawg]

And why are homosexual acts evil?

Why is sleeping with someone prior to marriage evil?

Why is prostitution evil? Drug abuse? Suicide? Wrath? Gluttony?

[lars573]

And why are homosexual acts evil?

Because the backward desert people who wrote the bible needed everyone breeding.

[ICantSpellDawg]

I disagree that it is purely the act that is sinful. If you feel that you have a homosexual orientation then you are on some level still actively rebelling against the way God made you and the life you were designed to lead. To have an attraction to men and refrain from pursuing it is still sinful.

Right, thoughts can be impure, but we are judged by faith and actions. Thoughts are sinful because they lead us to our undoing. All of us are driven by temptations that will destroy us if we let them and all sins have the ability to do it, from murder to degradation of ones spouse to petty theft